When all the world began truly shutting down and people began turning to baking bread and skyping with their families, I picked up Moby Dick. I’d tried it last summer, as part of a half formed book club which fell apart less than halfway through the novel. I still have a stamped portrait of the whale in the blood-red sea tucked into my copy of the book- given to me by the only other member of the group with any enthusiasm for this novel. It now serves as my bookmark.
Our world is caught in a surreal stasis. A pandemic flows over us, and while its consequences ripple around us daily, many of us are existing in suspended animation.
We’re living in a time when we’re asked to deny ourselves agency – to refrain from exercising control and influence.
We’ve stepped back from daily life as we’ve come to know it. Many of us have pulled our strength, our activities, our productivity, our ability, and in short, our power, inward; we’ve retreated into the interiors of our homes, our immediate families, and ourselves.
Category:
As we listened to Genesis 1 on an audio Bible last week while piecing together a puzzle, my son remarked, “It’s saying the same thing over and over.” He was referring, of course, to the repeated line at the end of each day of creation, “And there was evening, and there was morning…”
“Well,” I responded, “That’s the refrain. The creation account is like poetry. There is order and rhythm to it.”
Category:
